A VDR Is Not Only about Deal-Making

Initially, virtual data rooms have been designed to simplify the life of deal-makers: they were supposed to provide businessmen with space where the relevant documents could have been exchanged in a course of any transaction. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in a fact that the stereotypical vision of the room has become widespread. Usually, people treat it as a one-deal environment – you set it up, fill it in with documents, invite the rest of the deal participants, wait for them to work with the files, and close the room. Such an approach was justified for land-based repositories but not for virtual platforms (VDR).

In fact, you need a VDR not only for deals – the service has much more to offer its users: plenty of functions just remain unnoticed and underestimated as deal-makers think that the primary function of a virtual repository is to assist throughout the transaction. That is why the additional features of cloud-based rooms are perceived literally as additional and, thus, unnecessary. And such an attitude is wrong.

The Additional Roles of a Virtual Platform (VDR)

If you pay a bit more attention to the equipment of VDRs you would notice that they successfully perform at least three roles.

The Archive

Any VDR is a great place to store all the corporate data. You do not need to participate in any deal to make copies of your files and to put them in the room. Contracts, financial reports, personal data of your employees, etc. – all these files can be easily backed up with the help of the room. In a case, anything happens to your main servers you have no reasons to worry as all the information could be restored from a cloud-based repository. Moreover, when you are about to get involved in a deal you do not have to hurry up and prepare the room for data exchange – you just need to choose the relevant files and to open an access to them for the deal participants.

The Guard

All the information you store in the room is under a constant supervision and is protected on many levels. Due to a complex verification process, an external intrusion is doubtful. Meanwhile, the actions of all the authorized visitors are being registered: whatever happens in your room you would see it in an audit log. Hence, any data leaks – external and internal – are unlikely to take place. There is no chance that a file would be stolen and you would not manage to detect the thief. Also, not only the files related to deals are protected – the personal information of your employees is not endangered. Hence, the room allows you to keep all the sensitive and valuable information in a protected environment that cannot be misused either internally or externally.

The Meeting Place

You need to discuss the documents not only in a course of the deals with external actors. There are at least three other groups of people you need to stay in touch with:

The board. The room helps you to maintain smooth dialogue with the board: even if someone is missing you can still share all the required papers via the room – and the person could join the discussion from any place in the world;

The investors. To maintain good relationship with your investors you have to contact them regularly and to keep them update with the latest news. The VDR eliminates the need to meet face-to-face as you can share the reports, financial results, etc. within the platform;

The employees. An uninterrupted communication inside the team is crucial for success. Owing to the room, you can organize the work of your team more efficiently and to establish a strong communication network.

These three additional roles performed by VDRs are not that obvious from the first sight. But if you do not neglect these possibilities of your data room you would enhance your performance and gain great profit.